"Kiss The Boys Goodbye" 1938

"Dame Nature" 1938

"The International Casino" 1937

"Remember The Day" 1935

"Squaring The Circle" 1935

"Ts Eliot" 1936

New Discoveries in Brooklyn

Forgotten Drawings from the Brooklyn Sunday Eagle

There is a tendency to think of Hirschfeld as a New York Times artist. He did, after all, appear on average every other week in the paper for seventy-five years. But it was not the only New York paper he appeared in, or even the first. In 1943, an editor at the Times complained to Hirschfeld that he did not know what paper he was reading because all of them had Hirschfeld drawings, which led to his exclusive arrangement with the Times for New York newspapers. For a more than a decade before, Hirschfeld appeared regularly in three different papers: The Times, the Herald Tribune and the Brooklyn Sunday Eagle. While many know the first two, Hirschfeld did memorable work for the Eagle where occasionally the editors turned over a whole page to the artist to work his magic.

The Eagle featured a number of caricaturists over the years, and Hirschfeld’s first drawing for the paper was of the musical revue, Rain or Shine, starring Joe Cook. It appeared in February 1928, just three weeks after Hirschfeld’s first drawing for the Times. He was an irregular contributor until the Fall of 1934 when his work started to appear two or three times a month. When the paper was purchased in 1936 by new owners, caricature disappeared for nearly a year before returning with a Hirschfeld drawing of a forgotten Arthur Kober comedy, Having Wonderful Time, which was later transformed into a hit musical Wish You Were Here.

Hirschfeld’s tenure at the Eagle came to end during a newspaper strike in 1939. The union asked the artist to do a drawing of the owner who Hirschfeld portrayed as a turkey. The image was blown up and put on trucks that blocked the entrances to the paper. When the strike was settled, one of the conditions that management made as part of the agreement was that they would not have to re-hire Hirschfeld. The union agreed, much to Hirschfeld’s chagrin, and he never appeared again in the paper.